


i'll be your strength

by lovesickriot



Category: SK8 the Infinity (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Comfort/Angst, Confessions, Episode Fix-it: s01e07 We Don't Balance Out, First Kiss, Friends to Lovers, Getting Together, M/M, Post-Episode: s01e07 We Don't Balance Out
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-01
Updated: 2021-03-01
Packaged: 2021-03-13 22:35:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,642
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29783109
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lovesickriot/pseuds/lovesickriot
Summary: Reki turned around, ready to leave, but for some reason couldn’t make his feet take another step away from Langa. It was as if his own body was screaming at him to stay, do something to fix this, while his mind just wanted to get away and preserve whatever shreds of dignity and self-love he still possessed before they got destroyed any further.
Relationships: Hasegawa Langa/Kyan Reki, Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Comments: 13
Kudos: 171





	i'll be your strength

“You and I aren’t… a good match anymore.”

“Reki…”

He kept walking, as if he hadn’t heard Langa. He couldn’t bear to look at him for another second; his heart was broken enough as it was.

“Reki, please.”

Langa’s voice was so quiet that Reki could barely hear it over the sound of the rain. But he did, and it hit him as hard as it would have had Langa screamed it next to his ear. He sounded so upset, so vulnerable, so  _ broken _ that it had Reki’s heart stuttering.

He couldn’t make himself take another step, but still didn’t have it in himself to face Langa.

“What’s going on?” Langa asked. Reki could hear him take steps toward him over the sound of rain. “Reki, what happened?”

He scratched at his elbow. “Why does it matter. We’re done.”

“No!”

Before Reki had time to say anything else, Langa was closing the distance between them and grabbing his arm, forcing him to turn around and face him. Reki kept his eyes fixed on the ground and tried pulling back his arm to get himself free. Langa held on.

“Reki, talk to me!” Langa was now shouting.

“Let me go,” Reki quietly grumbled.

“No! Not until you tell me what’s going on!”

“There’s no point. Just let me go.”

Langa’s grip on his arm tightened, but his voice got softer. “Is this… Reki, is this about Adam?”

Reki flinched at the mention of his name.

“So it is. Reki, I understand that you dislike him, but--”

“Dislike!? You think I  _ dislike _ him?” Reki snarled, finally pulling his arm with enough strength for Langa to let him go. “I am  _ terrified _ of him. I can’t sleep without having dreams of him--of him coming at me, and me  _ flying off _ my skateboard. Do you know how terrifying that is? Do you know how scared I am every time I get on my skateboard that I’m going to get thrown off again!?”

Something flickered in Langa’s eyes and he lowered his eyes to the ground, seemingly ashamed to face Reki in that moment.

“I’m sorry… I--”

“You what? You didn’t know? I told you, I  _ begged _ you not to skate against him, and all you had for me was a bullshit apology that means absolutely nothing to me.”

Reki turned around, ready to leave, but for some reason couldn’t make his feet take another step away from Langa. It was as if his own body was screaming at him to stay, do something to fix this, while his mind just wanted to get away and preserve whatever shreds of dignity and self-love he still possessed before they got destroyed any further. 

Deep down, he did want to fix it, he wanted to fix everything and go back to the way they were, when Langa was his best friend, the only one in years who had fully understood him, someone who meant  _ so much _ to him. Before Adam, before that fucking bastard that made Langa feel miles away even though Reki could touch him if he just turned around and reached out his arm.

“Reki, please, you have to believe me.” Langa’s voice cracked. “I really never meant to hurt you or upset you.”

“But you did,” Reki spat, before he turned around again. “And you wanna know the worst part? It’s that despite  _ everything _ that bastard has done to me, despite how he sucked the joy out of my favorite thing in the entire world, you somehow  _ look up to him _ and want to skate him. You’re supposed to be my best friend, and yet--”

Reki couldn’t finish his sentence. Langa had taken the last step separating them and had thrown his arm around him and pulled him into a tight hug, one of his hands going to the back of his neck to press Reki’s face against the crook of his neck, the other still holding on to his skateboard--the one Reki made for him.

“I’m sorry,” Langa said. His voice was no longer shaken or broken. He sounded determined. “You’re right. You’re absolutely right. I was looking up to the wrong person. I’m so sorry for hurting you, Reki. Please let me make it up to you, and I promise I won’t ever hurt you again.”

With a sob, Reki hugged Langa back as tight as he could, finally letting the tears free fall, mixing in with the rain. And Langa let him cry, as loudly as he wanted against the howl of the rain and the wind, and only hugged him tighter in an attempt to comfort him.

Even under all the rain, he could still feel the warmth emanating from Langa’s body. Somehow it felt like it warmed him inside as well.

“Just… just promise me you won’t skate against him.  _ Promise me _ , Langa. And don’t you dare take it back with a bullshit excuse.”

Langa nodded vigorously against his hair. “I promise. I promise I won’t. Just please don’t leave me, Reki. I really missed you.”

A moment of silence.

“I missed you too.”

With a sigh of relief, Langa pulled back and gave Reki the softest smile he had ever seen, before he reached out his free hand to wipe away his tears, even though it was a futile effort under all the rain.

Reki took a deep breath to calm down his crying. “You should go home, get out of the rain and into some dry clothes before you get sick.”

“You too. Oh, but you’ll be coming to S next week, right? Everyone missed you.”

Oh. Right.

It was like all the relief from working the Adam thing out with Langa had washed away in the rain and left him exactly the same as before--lonely, and broken, and mediocre at best.

You see, people tend to put other people--but especially kids--in neat one-worded boxes. So they’d name one of them  _ the smart kid _ , and the next  _ the misbehaving kid _ , and the one after that  _ the artistic kid _ , and that would be their label for years to come. And Reki had always been  _ the skateboarding kid _ .

Now, Reki knew--rationally, at least--that people are more than one word, than one single label. But he supposed that if he was going to let himself get defined by one thing, then it might as well be his favorite thing in the world, no? And so he allowed it, and let skateboarding take over his whole person and become the thing he tied his self-worth to. He supposed the same way  _ the smart kid _ would do with his grades, and  _ the artistic kid _ would do with his comics.

And he was okay knowing that there were people better than him, like Cherry, or Joe, or even  _ fucking Adam _ . He knew he wasn’t a prodigy, or a master, or anything of the sort, but he was good at the very least.

Except now he wasn’t. Because now Langa had appeared, and he had gone from looking up at Reki to being so far ahead of him that Reki could barely make out his silhouette in the horizon. It was like somewhere along the way, Reki’s label had shifted from  _ the skateboarding kid _ to  _ the loser hanging out with Snow _ . 

It’s not that Reki wasn’t proud of Langa, or even that he was jealous of him. He just felt… lost.  _ Mediocre _ . Like he was no longer good enough at the only thing he had ever been good at.

Going to S would just rub salt into the wound. A constant reminder that he had no talent, no skill, nothing about him worth anything.

“Reki?”

Langa calling out to him snapped him out of his thoughts and he looked up to find Langa already looking at him with a frown and a concerned expression. The rain also seemed to slow down, to only a few soft drops, while the wind kept howling around them.

“I’m sorry, I--I don’t think I can make it. I don’t think I’ll be going back for a while.”

“Why not? Are you grounded or something?”

Reki shook his head, not trusting his voice not to fail him. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to hang out with Langa; he really _had_ missed him. The past few days, it had felt like he had a Langa-shaped hole in his life. But skating with him, going to S of all places with him was too hard right now.

“Are you… still too mad at me?”

Langa’s question tugged at his heart, and he felt a few more tears starting to burn his eyes, threatening to come out. He had never wanted to hurt Langa, but he really didn’t have it in himself to go back like everything was fine.

“I’m not. I promise that everything is okay between us.”

“Then why don’t you want to go?” Langa pushed. “I thought you loved it there. You always said it was your favorite place in the world.”

Reki’s hands started shaking. “It--It is. It  _ was _ . But… I--I can’t go back, Langa. I can’t do it.”

“Did something happen? Is this about Adam?”

Even though he couldn’t avoid the flinch that came from hearing his name, Reki shook his head. He could blame and hate Adam for a lot of things, but that wasn’t one of them.

“Then what?”

He wasn’t sure if he should tell him. He hadn’t voiced it out loud to anyone, and part of him wasn’t even sure that he wasn’t just making a victim of himself in his head, throwing himself his very own pity party. But at the same time, exaggeration or not, was it really worth pushing away the first friend in years that had understood him so well?

Before he could stop himself, he took a step forward and buried his face in Langa’s shirt. Langa seemed to hesitate at first, but then quickly put his free arm around Reki’s shoulders and softly caressed his hair. It was a simple gesture, small and maybe insignificant, but it made him feel… safe. Like he wasn’t alone anymore--actually, like he had never been alone to begin with, just that he’d been too stupid and blind to realize it.

“Talk to me,” Langa whispered. “You can tell me anything.”

“I… I guess I just feel… worthless.”

Langa’s hand froze. “What are you talking about?”

“Everyone’s talking about it.” Reki shrugged. “How you’re so amazing, and that I’m just some loser tagging along with you. And it’s true, you are extraordinary, and I’m… I don’t know, I’m below ordinary, I’m just… worthless.”

There were a few moments of stillness and silence, even the wind seemed to die down around them. Then it came to a crash, with Langa pushing Reki away and looking at him with furious eyes.

“What the fuck, Reki!” he shouted. “‘Worthless’!? Are you  _ kidding  _ me!?”

“Wha--”

“Reki, you’re so goddamned  _ amazing _ ! How can you not realize that!?”

“But--”

“But nothing! You’re the whole reason I even took up skateboarding, how can you talk about yourself that way and sell yourself so short?”

Langa opened his mouth, as if he was going to keep talking, but closed it again and let his head hang down, looking defeated.

“Langa…” Reki whispered. He didn’t know what to say.

When Langa looked back up, he had tears in his eyes, and it felt like a punch in the gut.

“Reki, the first time I saw you skate, I fell in love with you. So please don’t talk like--like your skating is anything less than amazing.”

What?

It felt as if the whole world slowed down around them until it came to a complete stop. 

Had he heard right? Had Langa really just…  _ confessed _ his love for Reki?

“What are you… Are… Are you serious?” he asked, his voice nothing more than a whisper.

“Of course I’m serious, why would I lie about that? I’m not expecting a response, so don’t worry. I just… I just thought it was the only way to make you realize just how extraordinary you are. You think I took up skating just because it felt like fun? You think I injured every centimeter of my skin falling off a skateboard just because? You think I waited out here for hours in the rain waiting for you to come home because I was bored at home? Of course I love you, Reki. I’ve been in love with you all along.”

“Langa--”

“I’m not just saying that. I really think you’re amazing, and… and  _ awe-inspiring _ , and I wish you would listen to me rather than whatever assholes said those things about you. Skating with you is the best part of my day. You’re not some loser hanging out with me, you’re an amazing skater in your own right and you push me to be better every day. Please, _please_ believe me.”

Reki smiled sadly. “You really think I’m an amazing skater?”

“In my eyes, you’re the best one.”

Despite his shaking hands, Reki tried to set his skateboard and his backpack on the ground as carefully as possible, before tugging Langa’s skateboard out of his hands to put it down as well.

“What are you d--”

Before Langa had a chance to finish his question, Reki put both hands on his cheeks and pushed him down to finally kiss him.

Langa seemed to hesitate at first, probably too shocked to fully comprehend what was going on, but once he did understand, he didn’t waste any time in pulling Reki closer by his waist and kissing back with all the emotion he had been holding in for months.

When they pulled apart, Langa kept one of his hands on Reki’s waist, but the other went up to caress his cheek.

“Are you… sure?” he asked.

Reki scoffed. “If you really think by now that I’m not in love with you too, then you haven’t been paying attention.”

With a radiant smile, Langa leaned back down for another kiss.

“Come to S with me?” he asked after. “Screw those other people. We can skate together. And everyone else is worried about you.”

“Yeah.” Reki nodded. “Yeah, I’ll go to S with you. Can’t take away your inspiration for skateboarding.”

Langa’s laugh echoed through the empty street.

* * *

“You’re back,” Cherry remarked with a cocked eyebrow. “We weren’t sure if you would be.”

Reki hung his head down in shame. “I was… upset about some things. But I realized I couldn’t let them hold me back.” 

From the corner of his eye, Reki saw Cherry kick Miya’s ankle, and Miya choked.

“I’m…  _ sorry _ for what I said the other night. I shouldn’t have made you feel like you weren’t good enough.” Miya kept his eyes trained on the ground. 

“It’s alright.” Reki reached out to mess with Miya’s hair, earning him a hiss in response. "I know you didn't mean to make me that upset. We're good."

“Glad things have turned out alright!” Joe sent him an encouraging smile, before looking at Langa. “I assume you two worked things out as well.”

“Yep!” Langa threw his arm around Reki’s shoulder. “We’re dating now!” he announced, with a giant smile on his face.

Miya simply rolled his eyes and muttered a “gross” under his breath before walking away. Joe, however, leaned closer to Cherry to whisper loudly in his ear, “Should we give them a talk, or…?”

“I am  _ not  _ dealing with that,” was the response Cherry gave him.

Joe straightened up and looked back at the boys. “We’re so happy for you guys!”

After they thanked him, Langa pulled Reki away by his hand.

“Where are we going?” Reki asked.

“I don’t know.” Langa shrugged. “Just wanted to skate with you. Is that okay.”

Reki smiled. “Yeah. Yeah, that’s always okay.”


End file.
